Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (5 page)

She was
pouring her second cup of coffee when Mike hobbled full speed through the door.
The look on his face told her immediately something was very wrong.

“Joan!
You gotta help Peter!”

“What?”
she asked, yelling.

“Come on!
He’s got something on him.”

She
groaned inwardly. It was always something on this planet—something hideous to
bite, stab or cling to you or infect you. She raced out with her guts in a
knot. There was no telling what it was.

“Where is
he?” she yelled at Mike’s back.

“Over
under the dock!”

The crew
was huddled over a section of dock a few meters from the edge, bending down or
on their hands and knees to look through the grate. One of the newer kids,
Bobby Fellows, had a long piece of aluminum conduit and was jabbing down
through the grate at something beneath it. From beneath the dock came a
high-pitched, modulating whistle that grated on her nerves.
 
A few of the workers had their hands over their
ears to shut out the piercing sound.

“Die!”
Bobby yelled. “Get off him!”

“What is
it?” Joan demanded, getting down on her hands and knees to look.

“He
dropped the key to the lift and went under to get it,” one of the workers
explained. “That’s when it got him.”

“Die!”
Bobby said, “Unnhh! Unnhh!”

“Stop,
Bobby!” she ordered.

She
brought her face down to the grate and looked. Peter had both arms wrapped
around one of the uprights and was holding on for dear life. His right leg was
wrapped with dark tentacles. She traced the tentacles back to the globular body
a meter behind him. The creature had its other tentacles wrapped around another
upright and was trying to pull Peter loose. Each time the creature contracted
and pulled, Peter’s leg rose up from the tension.

“What is
that?”

“We don’t
know,” Mike said, “but it won’t let go.”

“We’ll
see about that.”

“Peter!”
she yelled. “Peter can you hear me?”

“He won’t
answer. He’s drugged or something,” someone said.

“Shit!
Give me that pipe,” she said to Bobby.

She lifted
the rod up and slipped it through a space directly over the creature’s body and
guided it down until it rested right on it. She jabbed down at it and tested
the consistency.

“Tough as
leather. Here. Everybody put your weight on this,” she said taking a high grip.
“Now, on three. Ready?
 
One, two, three!”

In unison
they rammed the rod down. She could feel it pierce the creature’s skin, slide
through and into the ground underneath it. There was a single shriek-like
whistle.

“Hold
this,” she said to Bobby. Bobby held on and gave it another sharp jab or two.

She got
down and looked. The creature had let go of Peter’s leg and was flailing
aimlessly around the pipe jammed through its middle.

“There.
Pull on
that
for a while!” she shouted, fury in her voice.

She ran
to the edge of the dock, jumped down and started under it on her hands and
knees. Peter was still clamped to the support with both arms. His eyes were
closed as if he were asleep.

“Peter,”
she said pulling at his arms. “Peter, it’s me. Let go. Let's get you out of
here. Peter?”

He just
groaned and held tighter.

“Goddammit
. . .”
 
she muttered, frustrated and
afraid.

He wasn’t
about to let go. Some survival mechanism had taken over his entire system and
glued him in place.

“Peter!”
she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Peter! It’s Joan! Let go! It’s all right!
It’s dead!”

She
pulled at his arms, and then watched one eye slowly open and felt his grip on
the upright lessen a bit. A moment later, she was able to unwind his arms and
get him moving. Mike and another kid scrabbled under to help her, and they soon
had him sliding toward the edge of the dock and open air.

“Uh,
Joan?” a kid named Larry said from above. “I think you’d better hurry up.”

Joan
looked up through the grate and saw his eyes fixed on the jungle’s edge. She
turned and looked over her shoulder. It looked like a dark mass, like flowing
mud from a distance. She squinted to sharpen her focus and could make out the
individual shapes of the brethren of the thing under the dock moving on them from
the jungle.

“Screw
this!” she cursed. “Move! Get him out of here!” She felt for the phone in her
shirt and found the spot that should have held it flat and empty.

“Shit!
Tommy, go call security! Run! Go!”

They
pushed and wrestled Peter up onto the dock. Joan picked him up and fast-stepped
toward the office. When she turned around to look, she saw the creatures
flowing up over the edge of the dock like a dark wave.

“Hundreds
. . . hundreds . . .”
 
her voice cracked
in astonishment.

They made
it to the office, clamored inside, closed the door and locked it. Tommy was
there with a phone in his hand. “They’re on the way,” he said.

No sooner
had he put the phone down when Joan heard the first shots being fired. The
sound confused her.

She put
Peter down on the floor and went to the window to look. She was expecting a few
of the security guards with their little pistols. What she saw was some kind of
special weapons squad, in dun-colored uniforms, charging in from the direction
of the cloister firing at the intruders with automatic rifles. In a matter of
seconds, the gunfire sounded like a steady buzz. They were amazingly efficient.
The bullets hit the dark shapes by the hundreds, sending red and wet material
in all directions until the air was filled with spray.

In a
matter of minutes, the squad had decimated the swarm of whatever’s, leaving
chunks of dead things strewn over the dock like so much meat. When it was over,
the soldiers walked around the mess, spraying bursts into a creature, here or
there, that still moved.

Joan went
outside to get a closer look and approached one of the men.

“Thanks,”
she said. “Those things are vicious.”

The
soldier turned on her without a smile. “Go back inside,” he said, his voice
even and without emotion.

Joan was
taken aback. She was only thanking him for saving her life. “I was just . . .”

“I said
get inside,” he repeated with malice. His voice sent a chill down her spine.

Joan
turned and started back to the office, then stopped and took another look. A
crowd of contractors had begun to form a rough perimeter around the battle, and
the soldiers had moved on them now, pushing and shoving them with their rifles.
They were rough about it; too rough in Joan’s opinion. She watched as one of
the men, an electrician she knew only as Dirk, shoved a soldier back with both
hands.

Without
warning, the solider dipped his rifle’s muzzle at him and shot him in the
chest. The brief burst sent a bright spray of red behind him. His body crumpled
like a sack onto the dock’s grate.

“Hey!”
Joan yelled. “Hey!”

“Get
inside, lady!” the one in front of her said.

“But he
shot that man!”

The
soldier turned his rifle on her causing her to take a deep breath. She walked
backwards a few feet, then turned stiffly and walked through the office door.

“Those
guys mean business,” Mike said.

“Did you
see that?” Tommy asked, innocent disbelief in his voice.

“Christ,”
Joan said. “They’re killers.”

What
she’d just seen put to rest any latent notion she had about storming the
cloister. These were the Council’s private guard—mercenaries hired to protect
it from threats natural or otherwise. She hadn’t even known they were there.
Nobody had.

* * *

That
evening she related the story to Bill, who’d already heard most of it from
Lavachek, who’d heard it from someone else by phone moments after it happened.

“I should
have guessed they had something like that,” he said. “There’s never been a
shortage of soldiers ready to work for whoever pays. Especially now.”

4

H
is soul swam wounded
to and fro in the currents of pain for eons. A veil torn, shredded, black as
night wrapped him tight and blurred the demons that swam with him, wings
ragged. Cruel, they caressed him with anguish and pulled him to pieces over and
over. Clever as well, they left a tiny bit of his mind intact, carefully in
place as a hated remembrance, like the clock from his grandmother’s house which
rocked and ticked, rocked and ticked without end. A million times he willed
death to come, and to help it, he yanked free of their demon’s grip like a
terrified child, then dived and forced himself deep to drown. But the demons
pulled him up and revived him with suffering yet again. He pleaded in babble,
with words without meaning, but they understood his senseless cries and rocked
their heads to the rhythm of his lament, their smiles rotten with hate.

Then,
without warning, the demons vanished. They vanished as if washed away by a
flood of clean water, and the pain with them. For another eon the dim thought
that sweet death had finally overtaken him glowed in the twilight of his
relief. As time passed, life and the feelings of life slowly filled the void.
Finally, he felt breath come into him like a strong, warm wind.

* * *

 
“How’s he doing today?” John asked, looking
down at the stranger, as if he weren't there.

“I’d say
he’s much better actually,” Donna said. “His pulse is normal, his breathing is
regular, and I’ve got his electrolytes well within the normal range. If I could
weigh him, I’d say he’s maybe put on a little weight. I keep getting the idea
he’s trying to move from time to time. I’m thinking about starting some
physical therapy, you know, exercising his joints, but I’m not looking forward
to that.”

“You mean
you don’t want to lay hands on him?” John teased. “That might be fun.”

“You’re really
sick,” she smiled. “Far sicker than he is.”
 
He smiled back. The smile faded, however, when he noticed one of the
patient’s eyes flutter.

“Check
this,” he said. “He’s trying to open his eyes.”

Donna
leaned over him and studied the movement. “Come on, Buster. You can do it. Open
those pretty blues or browns, or whatever's.”

 
As she watched, one, then the other, of the
patient’s eyes fluttered open, and then closed, several times. Finally staying
open, the eyes stared straight at her and blinked, slowly and thickly. She
reached over and grabbed a small bottle with a little spout on it. “This is
just sterile water, Buster. It won’t hurt.”

She
flushed his eyes with water and dabbed the excess from his face with a clean
towel. “There. That’s better, huh?” The eyes stared straight at her, and she
was sure now that they saw her. In only an instant, something about them made
her very uneasy.

The
patient breathed deeply once or twice, and the foul odor that reached her made
her back off and fan the air with her hand. “Gad!”

“Hey, I’d
say he’s trying to talk,” John said.

The
patient’s mouth opened slowly and stretched.
 
It closed and opened, and the tongue worked out and back. She was afraid
to irrigate his mouth because she didn’t know if he could swallow just yet.
Putting liquid in there might cause him to inhale it.

“You’re
on your own, Mister,” she said. “Come on. Talk to us. Tell us something.”

Finally,
a sound, thin and shapeless, came up from him like a mist.